This week-end marks the beginning of the Holiday season. While we all look forward to eating turkey, pumpkin pie, putting up Christmas trees and spending time with loved ones for a significant number of people the holiday season also signifies a time of stress and deep depression for some. Personally I generally have my highest highs and lowest lows during this time of the year. Since my divorce over seven years ago I have really bounced around during the holiday season going here and there often not sure who or where I am going to spend Thanksgiving or Christmas day.

In an effort to ward off the holiday blues this season I am trying to be more intentional about what I do and where I go for the holidays. Over the past couple of days I have spent a significant amount of time decorating my house in an effort to create an atmosphere that will hopefully lift my soul and the spirit of anyone who comes to visit. So far I am really pleased with what I have created this year. Over the years my holiday tastes have evolved to include a bit of almost everything from traditional nativity scenes to gnomes, dragons, fairies, and my latest Christmas Viking ship decoration. To the Christmas traditionalist my house may appear to be an eclectic mass of Christmas schizophrenia but there is a method to my apparent madness. It’s called “enchantment” and for at least the past eighteen years or so I have slowly, gradually, and methodically surrounded myself with objects and mythological beings which are by their very nature incarnations of the spirit of enchantment.

I am not sure where the origins of this magical/mythical appeal are rooted. Perhaps it originally started when I became obsessed as a boy with watching Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer…or…maybe it all started with the birth of my two sons eighteen years ago. Whatever the case, my heart and home are now inhabited by religious and mythological symbols and beings which help to create a feeling of enchantment and in a world filled with so much cynicism and assumed cold hard facts it is always good to come home to an alternative world filled with creatures, beings and powerful religious and mythical symbols which remind us of the beauty and enchantment that co-exist with a world dominated by science, politics, competing ideologies and some religious people who seem determined to squelch anything magical or mysterious.

Earlier in the day I spent time photographing some of the enchanting symbols and creatures who now inhabit my humble abode and I have posted the entire collection of this years Christmas decorations on my photography blog called Bilbo’s Adventures.